Health & Wellness: Getting a handle on stress

Thursday

Jan 18, 2018 at 5:01 AM

Above, Walter Rice of Holistic Healing Services in Shrewsbury, helps patients who may be dealing with stress. Some clients make use of his healing table/Walter Bird Jr. photo

Stress is a part of everyday life. It can, in fact, be a good thing. In times of danger, stress can trigger survival instincts. In less life-threatening instances, such as a job interview, stress can be a positive motivator. Chronic stress, however, has become a more constant — and deadly — threat.

As the father of stress, Hans Selye, said, “Only in a dead object is there no stress …”

“It can kill you,” said Mark Clark, program coordinator of the cardiac rehab program at Saint Vincent Hospital.

It is a blunt and, unfortunately, accurate assessment of the effects stress can have on the body. Even if it doesn’t kill you, stress can significantly impact your life in negative ways.

According to 2014 data from the American Psychological Association, American Institute of Stress in New York, 77 percent of people in the U.S. regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress. An alarming 73 percent regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress. Almost 50 percent say stress has a negative impact on their personal and professional lives.

There is a price tag to stress as well, with a reported $300 billion in annual costs to employers in stress-related health care and missed work. Stress is no laughing matter. It is also unavoidable.

“It’s a necessary part of life,” Clark said. “We’re going to have stress in our life. The problem nowadays is we’re having more chronic stress. The days of the caveman with fight or flight syndrome, they’re pretty much over. We’re not being threatened anymore by saber-toothed tigers and wooly mammoths. Back then, once it was over, it was over. You survived or you didn’t. What’s happening now, we have chronic stress. We don’t have a good shutoff valve.”

Chronic stress, Clark said, knocks down the immune system and puts stress on the heart. It is one of the big focuses in his work with cardiac patients. As part of a 12-week program with patients, three to four weeks are dedicated to stress.

Balance, according to Walter Rice, is important - and hard to achieve. Rice runs Holistic Healing Services in Shrewsbury. A former Catholic priest, he has worked as a medical social worker at several area hospitals and works part-time at the Shrewsbury Senior Center. He teaches alternative methods of dealing with stress.

“The mind does only two things,” Rice said. “It either focuses on the past, all the should-haves and what-ifs, or on the future. It’s hard to be in the present. A lot of people are usually preoccupied in the past or on what’s going to happen. Once we finish one, another one comes, and another one comes. We’re never satisfied. It’s hard to just live in the moment.”

Rice teaches mindful meditation, coping strategies and relaxation techniques to help people connect with their spiritual energy, “and get connected with their heart, become friends with themselves, and also to deal with what’s outside of them, because we live in a very stressful, crazy world sometimes, and how to cope with that,” Rice said.

Both Clark and Rice stress the importance of putting oneself first as a way of eliminating stressors.

“The biggest problem is you have to find time for yourself,” Clark said. “Look at your life tree. Most of the time, the person is at the bottom of their life tree. ‘It’s my wife, the kids, the grandkids, the dog, the cat, the job.’ The only part they show up is at the bottom of the pile, not realizing that, without them, in the picture, life wouldn’t be the same for everybody else.”

Added Rice: “Most people are at the bottom of the scale, always thinking of others, wanting to help others, rescuing them. My focus is on letting them know they now need to be on top. They come first, not from an egotistical perspective, but from a whole body perspective of connecting.”

There are many ways to cope with stress. The National Institute of Mental Health recommends the following:

Clark works with patients on deep, or diaphragmatic, breathing, likening it to when a woman is pregnant.

“Breathing from the belly kind of slows their system down a bit,” he said. “There are so many hormones raging through us. We need to slow it down. One way is to work on breathing technique.”

Other suggestions from Clark include yoga classes, progressive relaxation exercises, imagery, repetitive prayer, meditation and laughter. Exercise, he said, is also effective in managing stress.

Rice said he encourages his clients to pay attention to breathing.

“I let people know your breath can be your friend,” he said. “Without your breath, you wouldn’t be here. Whether in a car, worrying about the person next to you, connect with your breath. Take a breath, two seconds, three seconds. It helps you to calm down.”

For Rice, it comes down to putting yourself first.

“By being friends with ourselves,” he said, “we can stay grounded, stay connected to our higher selves, be friends with ourselves and stay connected to others, too.”